SuperMario is back. And it’s yet another return to the future of an old guy who always makes the news. Ten months later, Mario Balotelli returns to play and – above all – to score goals. In Serie B, with the Monza shirt, on the last day of the 2020 championship. He was lost, he found himself. Monza won 3-0 against the leaders Salernitana and came out in the open: for promotion to Serie A you have to deal with the Brianza, at whose top management and technical are respectively Silvio Berlusconi and Adriano Galliani, the two architects of the Great Milan that has dominated the national and international scene from the second half of the 80s and for almost thirty years.
Balotelli is the icing on the cake of this team, the top player everyone looks to. It was agreed in early December, after a long period of inactivity. He had left Brescia badly, had played and lost the last match on 9 March, on the night of the pre-lockdown: Brescia defeated 3-0 from Sassuolo. In the summer, no club had wanted it. And Mario had spent these months wondering if it was really worth it, to insist on trying to prove that he still has some arrows in his bow.
Galliani wanted it in Monza, who did the same operation with another big name in the category, Kevin Prince Boateng. Balotelli has signed a contract of 500,000 euros for 6 months. No player in Serie B had ever been paid so much. His coach is Cristian Brocchi, also a Milan player, they had worked together for a few months in Milan 2015-16. The goal: to get back in the game.
Yet Mario is the proof that life is like Monopoly: you always start from the start. And he starts from himself, from what remains of his thirty years, from the potential unfinished champion he was. From what he has lost, from what he still has to say and do.
In the collective memory, the best Balotelli is the one who scored a double against Germany at Euro 2012, exhibited bodybuilder muscles and became the pride of all second generation Italians, demonstrating that if there is salvation, it is in the “melting pot” which is located. Since then he has changed teams, jerseys, girlfriends, moods. He was a bully and a victim, braggart and clumsy. He parked his career somewhere, forgetting where though.
Yesterday he remained on the field for just over an hour, 62 minutes to be precise, played in good physical condition (he scored another goal that was canceled) and the usual leadership. The goal scored with Monza means everything and nothing. Perhaps it means that Mario still knows how to find the spark somewhere, it means that we have to expect everything, without being too surprised, whatever happens.
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